Another DVD Crypto Injunction Granted In California

Less than 48 hours after a federal judge in New York granted an
injunction ordering three individuals to remove information about DVD
encryption from their Websites, a California superior court judge late
Friday issued an almost identical ruling in a case against roughly 50
defendants there.

Seeking the injunction in a Santa Clara, Calif. Superior Court was
the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA), a not-for-profit,
industry-backed organization that owns and licenses DVD encryption
technology. The DVD-CCA argued that the defendants in the case - who
it alleges shared classified information about DVD encryption for the
purpose of pirating DVD-viewing software - violated copyright laws and
stole trade secrets.

"We're not happy with the decision," said Tom McGuire, a spokesperson
for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which is defending the
Website operators in both the California and New York cases. "This is
really going to suppress legitimate technological innovation," he said.

Still, "this is just the first round of a much larger process," McGuire
added.

The EFF contends that, not only do the DVD protocols not meet the
minimum standard for "trade secrets," but that the Website postings
are a clear example of constitutionally protected free speech.

"In the end, whether you like it or not, what they are doing is legal,"
McGuire said last week. "What they are advocating may not be (legal),
but what they are posting on their sites is."

Many of the attempts to break the DVD industry's Content Scrambling
System (CSS) stem from the fact that no DVD viewing devices have been
licensed for computers running Linux and other alternative operating
systems, McGuire said. The tech-savvy Linux community responded by
working to break the protocols and develop its own devices.

While that hacking may or may not be legal, the posting of the
protocols clearly is, he said.

The judge in the California case apparently "didn't see much harm in
stopping the defendants (from) doing what they are doing," McGuire said.
By contrast, the judge in the case did believe that the information on
the Websites could cause serious harm to the DVD industry, McGuire said.

One of the EFF's concerns in the New York case - which is being pursued
by the MPAA - was that "the tone of the proceedings was that these are
'scofflaw' hackers who need to be shut down," McGuire said. "That tone
colored some of the judge's perspective of (the defendants).

Compounding that view is the fact that one of the defendants in the case
has hurled obscenities at the MPAA on his Website. "It's hard to make
some of these guys look like they have white hats," McGuire said.

That is less of a problem in the California case, McGuire said, but the
EFF is still faced with combating the view that the defendants are
"hackers violating the law," he said.

In its brief filed against the DVD-CCA complaint, the EFF wrote, "In this
case, (the) plaintiff seeks an injunction of unprecedented breadth and
intrusiveness on traditional free speech rights in order to defend a
supposed trade secret that was never very secret at all. (The) plaintiff
seeks prior restraint against hundreds of news sources on the Internet,
claiming the right to enjoin discussion of their Content Scrambling
System (CSS). That discussion centered on the results of efforts to
break the weak security structures on which the CSS depends."

From the EFF standpoint, the MPAA represents a somewhat more significant
threat than the DVD-CCA. "They've hired the best and they've got the
money to make it happen," McGuire said.

McGuire contends that the EFF is "venue-hopping" - bringing cases on the
DVD issues in a number of jurisdictions in order to boost their chances
of victory.

The EFF has received tentative expressions of support from the American
Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology and
may seek support from those organizations in the near future, McGuire
said.

The EFF maintains an extensive library of information on the DVD-CCA
case at http://www.eff.org/ip/Video/DVDCCA_case.

The DVD-CCA remained unreachable as of this writing. The organization
maintains a Web site at http://www.dvdcca.org/dvdcca/index.html, but
that site contains no information about the California case.

Contributed by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com.